The early 8-valve, chassis 442, at Uzes museum in 1966

I received the photographs as well as the leaflet (Original in French further down this page) from Peter Fafri, Thanks!

1966 SEASON — REOPENING WITH THE PRESENTATION OF THE FIRST BUGATTI IN FRANCE

The MUSEON DI RODO reopened its doors to the public on Palm Sunday, April 3, 1966.

Several new features were added to the collections during the annual closure.
New display cases allow for a more comprehensive presentation of the 1900-1935 toy railway collection.

However, the most spectacular new addition this year will be the 1912 Bugatti Type 13. This exceptional vehicle is interesting from several points of view.

Ettore Bugatti, after designing and building various prototypes, notably for the companies De Dietrich, Peugeot, and others, decided around 1910 to build under his own name a model he had designed two years earlier. This is the Type 13, a four-cylinder engine with a 1,327 cc displacement, a 65 mm bore, and a 100 mm stroke, with overhead valves, revving to 3,000 rpm, while engines of the time ran at 1,500-1,800 rpm. The Type 13 exceeded 100 km/h and thus equaled the speed of racing cars with 8 to 10-liter engines.

Ettore Bugatti equipped his factory in Molsheim, and the first chassis were delivered during 1911. It seems that the numbers started at 350, probably because Bugatti took into account vehicles previously built under its licenses, as mentioned above.

The Bugatti in the MUSEON bears chassis number 442. According to the archives of the Bugatti Owners Club in London, it must have been produced in late 1911 or, more likely, early 1912. The engine bears the number 84, which shows that this series of engines originated from the numbering system at the beginning of production in 1911.

It is estimated that up until the First World War, Bugatti built a maximum of 500 Type 13 cars. It is known that Bugatti came to France after the declaration of war and worked primarily on the construction of aircraft engines. He resumed production of the Type 13 after the war, with modifications (a 16-valve engine instead of 8).

The Bugatti 442 in the Museon features the first form of the Bugatti radiator, with barely rounded corners. It was during 1912 that the Bugatti radiator took on the ovoid shape that it would retain thereafter.

According to the archives and documentation of the Bugatti Owners Club, the Bugatti 442 in the Museon is one of the very few surviving examples of the original Type 13. Indeed, only three other older Bugattis are currently known:
No. 365, in the Prague Museum,
No. 366, in the possession of the English collector C.W.P. Hampton,
No. 432, also in Prague (owned by Mr. Ernest).
It is therefore the fourth oldest Bugatti in the world. It should be noted that No. 446 is in Denmark, owned by Mr. Hebsgaard.

It appears that no more than ten pre-1914 Bugatti Type 13s remain in the world.
It also follows from the preceding information that the Bugatti 442 is currently the "First Bugatti in France," and as such, deserves special attention.

It should be noted that the Type 13 had variations depending on the wheelbase (Type 13: 2 m wheelbase, Type 15: 2.4 m wheelbase, and Type 17: 2.55 m wheelbase). The Bugatti 442 has a 2 m wheelbase and therefore corresponds to the Type 13 proper.

The Bugatti 442 arrived at the Museon on November 22, 1965, from the Soviet Union, and this circumstance is one of the notable elements of this otherwise exceptional acquisition. From time to time, Fortune smiles upon collectors, and provided you grasp it by the braid, the miracle occurs. Here is the story of this discovery as recounted by Mr. Girod-Eymery, the owner and founder of the Museon.

“One evening in October 1964, a few of us Frenchmen were strolling through the lounges of the Metropole Hotel in Moscow. A distinguished-looking Soviet man passed by and, recognizing two of us, joined us, and that was the beginning of the adventure. A former commercial attaché in Paris, he hadn't seen his French friends for several years, during which he had held various other foreign posts. Having recently returned to Moscow, he had become one of the directors of Autoexport, the Soviet automobile export service. The conversation turned decidedly automotive and shifted from the contemporary era to the past.” Once on site, we learned with great interest that somewhere in the USSR there was a citizen who owned an antique French car and wished to donate it, preferably to a museum. This offer, initially presented to Soviet museums, had not attracted any interest, and the file was then passed on to the export administration, which had already approached several foreign countries.

Naturally, we put ourselves in the running, and it would take too long to recount in detail when and how we learned that it was a Bugatti Type 13, when we realized that the options already given to others had not been exercised and that we had moved into first position, etc.

“In short, after ten months of suspense, our friend at Autoexport was finally able to inform us that we had been accepted as buyers and that the jewel from Molsheim would be shipped to us, carefully packaged, from distant Tula, by rail to Odessa, and by sea from Odessa to Marseille, with transshipment in Genoa.

“All things considered, we sensed that our Soviet friends were pleased to see the Bugatti leave for France, and we were very touched by that.” We must also give thanks to the successive owners of this Bugatti 442, which entered Russia in 1914, having survived two wars and a major revolution, for their love of mechanics.

"It arrived in Uzès complete with all its mechanical parts, with its original bodywork, equipped with a Soviet magneto, but with its original Bosch magneto in the trunk. It naturally needs restoration. And Mr. Raineri has already undertaken a preliminary cleaning and a bodywork overhaul. There isn't enough time this year to get it running again. That will be the next step, and it doesn't seem likely to present any particular surprises. I must also pay tribute to my French friends, thanks to whom I met my fortune and who followed the progress of the negotiation with kindness, competence, and diligence. Without them, I could not have succeeded."

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIRST BUGATTI IN FRANCE

• Type 13, 2 m wheelbase,
• Chassis number 442, Engine number 84,
• Year of manufacture 1911 or early 1912,
• Imported to Russia in 1914,
• Entered France in 1965,
• 4-cylinder engine, 65 x 100 mm bore and stroke
• Displacement 1327 cc
• Power 30 hp
• Valves: 8 (rocker arms)

This car appeared in an article about Bugattis in Russia, in the Bugatti revue Volume 9 (2004), Issue 1.

An article on chassis 446, the car restored by Dennis Hebsgaard, was also published in the Bugatti revue Volume 9 (2025), Issue 1.